I hadn't been back here, to the old Colorado farm, since I was a child- well, eighteen, three years back. It was where the MacEilans had settled and put down roots in America, it was where my parents had built their own house when they married in 1879, and where my siblings and I were born.
The train pulled into the Running Creek train station- no longer simply the covered platform it had been twenty years previously. I gathered my coat into my arms and smiled. I had been away in Detroit for far too long. I was long overdue on a visit to my family.
I knew the way from town by heart. As a child it had been mostly empty, just hills with grasses waving in the wind. Now houses were scattered- still scarcely- along the dirt road. But the blue sky still shone, the June flowers were blooming, their sweet aroma floating in the wind.
The houses were still there, on the twelve- acre lot, all three of them. There was the first one built, the cottage, with its walls built by Uncle Iain still standing strong. Then there was the cottage by it that he had built for Maggie, several years later, and then the frame house my father had built. Charles O'Flaherty was a carpenter by trade, unlike Iain, who just did what he had to do. The furniture inside was all his work too. My mother, Anne, had teased the fact that he'd never let us have Uncle Iain help with any of it, but I liked my father's work more.
My brother Matthew owned the house now. Older than me by three years, he opened the door when I knocked, and I was home again. His two toddlers, both daughters, were 'helping' my sister- in- law, Florence, bake the day's bread, mostly by eating wads of dough. I smiled at them and fingered the gold promise ring on my hand. Maybe in a few years, this would be what I would have.
Maggie's son Kenneth lived in her old house, taking care of an aging Maggie, while her daughter Sarah had moved to Missouri. Maria lived with her husband in the original house- a notice had come from her father's employer, five years after she had come to live with my mother's family, saying that he had died of some disease. My parents had died before my visit- my mother in giving birth to her seventh child, my sister Brigid, ten years back; and my father three years ago, of cholera. That was when I had left. Already my brother had married. He let me go to Detroit, paid for my train ticket even, and I had been tickling the ivories and singing for my bread ever since at parties. Matthew had watched my younger siblings- except for Joseph, who had gone to California six months ago. Not once had he questioned me, so much like our father- easygoing and respecting our choices.
Aunt Emma, still youthful at forty- three, had come for a visit with her husband, Andrei, from their house in Denver. She'd moved there when she had married, but my childhood was always dotted with her visits to the farm. I was friends with all five of her children. We were so close as youth, until we grew up and started moving away and marrying.
Maggie came for dinner that night. She had stayed with the family, and she was valuable. She said that she had earned her bread by cleaning and watching children when she lived in Canada, and before, in Cornwall, before her family emigrated. She was so gentle, and quiet, but had a playful face to her all the same. The MacEilans had trusted her completely. See, Kenneth had been abducted by radicals, Â who were totally against British rule in Canada. For years they simply kept him, until he escaped and found his way to a house- one Maggie was a maid at. They had fallen in love as she took care of him, and they had married, but just after the twins were born, he was killed by fever. I had never known him. He had told her of his family, so she saved enough to go to Ireland, only to find that my mother's family had left two years before. Maggie pressed on, from job to job, trying to support both her small children, herself, and the constant train tickets. She was somehow led to us; whether by the grace of God or by her own means.
Four months after her arrival, the unthinkable happened. Mother had told me the story a hundred times as I was growing up.
Mary was gone when Anne went to wake her, her bed empty and cold. A note was set on her pillow. With shaking hands, fearing the worst, Anne had picked the paper up and unfolded it.
Dear family-
Please do not worry about me. I am fine, but needed to leave and find my own way in this world. By the time you read this, I will be on the train to Denver.
You see, I am nearly twenty years old. While Emma has her mysterious beau in Denver and Anne her 'friend' (ha!) Charles, I have nobody at home. They are sixteen, and Emma will marry in eight months' time, and I am only wasting away at the house! I see women my age with two children and another on the way, and here I am, alone, and although I know that you all love me, I needed to be on my own.
I will find a job in the city. A respectable one, too, Anne, I swear I won't go building railroads!
Anne had smiled before continuing.
The letter ended with promises to write, and an assurance that she'd stay safe. She ended up in California, marrying at twenty- one years old and having only one daughter. I'd not seen her terribly often growing up. At all, really.
We all crowded into my childhood home to eat. Iain and Katherine's four children were married now, except for their oldest, Elise. It made things slightly less crowded at the table. Aunt Beth was there too. She wasn't really my aunt, she was one of the Jones girls, and Beth had not been her name her whole life. She had been Lizzie first, then her full name of Elizabeth, then Liza, Bess, Betty, Eliza, and finally just Beth. After she had elected never to marry, she had decided that Beth was a nice enough name, and had kept it for fifteen years. Aunt Emma and Uncle Andrei had only their youngest son with them. Everything was so different now. Brigid and I sat together at the table, the two of us mirroring each other with matching dark hair and hazel eyes. She was only ten, but had our mother's wisdom and a maturity that made her seem twenty years older. "Niamh," she whispered to me at one point, "doesn't it feel as though Mother is here?"
My little sister's words pricked my heart, but, with tears in my eyes, I nodded. I wished she was. All of my siblings were here- Matthew, carrying on our father's business; then Joseph, who at nineteen had a dozen girls from town chasing him and the looks he had gotten from our mother. Peter, who was always quiet and nothing like other seventeen- year- olds; Moira, who was the gorgeous, spitting image of Mother, from the bright red hair to her emerald eyes. She had a beau (or three, more likely) even at fifteen, and was always a terrible flirt! Meav, who had the prettiest voice out of any girl at thirteen; and of course Brigid. But there was no Mother at our table, nor was there Father. I understood why I hadn't come back now: the place held too many memories. It had soaked up my parents like a sponge. I had to move on. Everybody knows that everybody dies, it's only a matter of when.
The only person who was missing was 'Aunt' Jane. She'd been swept off her feet when she was fifteen by a handsome young man who had promised her the world. They'd eloped, run off to Denver, and then he had left her, seven months pregnant, and had been seen later with another innocent girl, another victim to his charms. She had given birth and stayed in the city with her son. We never heard from her.
It was good to be home again, with all of my siblings and closest family, even if it was just for a little while. You see, life had never treated the MacEilan family well, but we were all the better for it.